The Pious Poisoner

We have previouslyseen various cases in the Halachic literature of wives poisoning their husbands; I recently came across this dramatic tale, out of the eighteenth century Ottoman Empire (translated from the original in Spanish, from “Barbaria”):

We are not told the woman’s motive: anger at her husband for planning to abandon Judaism, worry over becoming an Agunah, or even concern for the state of her husband’s immortal soul, along the lines of the celebrated Jewish cry of “או יהודי או צלוב”; the latter is the suggestion of the חן טוב: